MissingRemote.com, as the name would suggest, are a bunch of techies interested in the kinds of PCs that we’d use in our living rooms instead of a straight up TV. So if you’re thinking of building a dedicated Media Center PC or Home Theater PC, you’d do very well indeed to pay heed to what these guys have to say.
With that in mind, they’ve just explored the new possibilities offered by AMD’s new Llano APUs, which claim pretty raunchy graphics and HD video capabilities with their best in class onboard graphics. Of course, what better to compliment Llano in a HTPC build than our very own Micro-ATX from factor A75M-UD2H. The A75M-UD2H features a wealth of display options that include D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and Display ports as well as a 10 channel Realtek ALC889 audio codec, just the kind of features you need for an affordable, media-centric PC build.
“The GIGABYTE A75M-UD2H includes almost every feature and I/O method available from a mainstream microATX motherboard, including: internal and external USB 3.0, FireWire, legacy PS/2 keyboard/mouse support, DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI-D, D-SUB (VGA), TOSLINK and multi-channel analog audio, as well as two internal connectors which can be critical to some segments of the HTPC crowd – serial (for RS-232) and parallel (for older vacuum florescent displays). One feature that was not obvious, but greatly appreciated (only discovered while reading the manual – we do it so you don’t have to ;)), are the high output USB ports which provide up to 1.5A for USB 2.0 and 2.7A for USB 3.0m speeding device charging, as well as removing the need for dual connector cables when attaching a 2.5” USB hard drive.
With so many features available, it would not be unexpected for some expansion options to limit the overall usefulness of the system (USB/FireWire connectors between the PCI/PCIe slots for example); but that was not the case as the board is laid out in an intelligent and usable way. ….Offering solid general performance alongside a full featured GPU, the AMD A8-3800 and GIGABYTE A75M-UD2H provide an extremely compelling solution for a dedicated HTPC system.” - Andrew Van Til – MissingRemote.com
You can find the full and detailed review from Andrew on MissingRemote.com right here.
Detailed specs and info about the A75M-UD2H Micro-ATX board here.
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